He said, and wept; then spread his sails before}The winds, and reached at length the Cuman shore:}Their anchors dropped, his crew the vessels moor.}They turn their heads to sea, their sterns to land,And greet with greedy joy the Italian strand.Some strike from clashing flints their fiery seed;Some gather sticks, the kindled flames to feed,Or search for hollow trees, and fell the woods,Or trace through valleys the discovered floods.Thus while their several charges they fulfil,The pious prince ascends the sacred hillWhere Phœbus is adored; and seeks the shade,Which hides from sight his venerable maid.Deep in a cave the Sibyl makes abode;Thence full of Fate returns, and of the god.Through Trivia's grove they walk; and now behold,And enter now, the temple roofed with gold.When Dædalus, to fly the Cretan shore,His heavy limbs on jointed pinions bore,(The first who sailed in air,) 'tis sung by Fame,}To the Cumæan coast at length he came,}And, here alighting, built this costly frame.}Inscribed to Phœbus, here he hung on highThe steerage of his wings, that cut the sky:Then, o'er the lofty gate, his art embossedAndrogeos' death, and (offerings to his ghost)Seven youths from Athens yearly sent, to meetThe fate appointed by revengeful Crete.And next to these the dreadful urn was placed,In which the destined names by lots were cast:The mournful parents stand around in tears,And rising Crete against their shore appears.There too, in living sculpture, might be seenThe mad affection of the Cretan queen;Then how she cheats her bellowing lover's eye;The rushing leap, the doubtful progeny—The lower part a beast, a man above—The monument of their polluted love.Nor far from thence he graved the wonderous maze,A thousand doors, a thousand winding ways:Here dwells the monster, hid from human view,Not to be found, but by the faithful clue;Till the kind artist, moved with pious grief,Lent to the loving maid this last relief,And all those erring paths described so well,That Theseus conquered, and the monster fell.Here hapless Icarus had found his part,Had not the father's grief restrained his art.He twice essayed to cast his son in gold;Twice from his hands he dropped the forming mould.All this with wondering eyes Æneas viewed:Each varying object his delight renewed.Eager to read the rest...Achates came,}And by his side the mad divining dame,}The priestess of the god, Deïphobe her name.}"Time suffers not," she said, "to feed your eyesWith empty pleasures; haste the sacrifice.Seven bullocks, yet unyoked, for Phœbus chuse,And for Diana seven unspotted ewes."This said, the servants urge the sacred rites,While to the temple she the prince invites.A spacious cave, within its farmost part,Was hewed and fashioned by laborious art,Through the hill's hollow sides: before the place,A hundred doors a hundred entries grace:As many voices issue, and the soundOf Sibyl's words as many times rebound.Now to the mouth they come. Aloud she cries,—"This is the time! inquire your destinies!He comes! behold the god!" Thus while she said,(And shivering at the sacred entry staid,)Her colour changed; her face was not the same,And hollow groans from her deep spirit came.Her hair stood up; convulsive rage possessedHer trembling limbs, and heaved her labouring breast.Greater than human kind she seemed to look,And, with an accent more than mortal, spoke.Her staring eyes with sparkling fury roll,When all the god came rushing on her soul.Swiftly she turned, and, foaming as she spoke,—"Why this delay?" she cried—"the powers invoke.Thy prayers alone can open this abode;Else vain are my demands, and dumb the god."She said no more. The trembling Trojans hear,O'er-spread with a damp sweat, and holy fear.The prince himself, with awful dread possessed,His vows to great Apollo thus addressed:—"Indulgent god! propitious power to Troy,Swift to relieve, unwilling to destroy!Directed by whose hand, the Dardan dartPierced the proud Grecian's only mortal part!Thus far, by Fate's decrees and thy commands,Through ambient seas and through devouring sands,Our exiled crew has sought the Ausonian ground;And now, at length, the flying coast is found.Thus far the fate of Troy, from place to place,With fury has pursued her wandering race.Here cease, ye powers, and let your vengeance end:Troy is no more, and can no more offend.And thou, O sacred maid, inspired to seeThe event of things in dark futurity!Give me, what heaven has promised to my fate,To conquer and command the Latian state;To fix my wandering gods, and find a placeFor the long exiles of the Trojan race.Then shall my grateful hands a temple rearTo the twin gods, with vows and solemn prayer;And annual rites, and festivals, and games,Shall be performed to their auspicious names.Nor shalt thou want thy honours in my land;For there thy faithful oracles shall stand,Preserved in shrines; and every sacred lay,Which, by thy mouth, Apollo shall convey—-All shall be treasured by a chosen trainOf holy priests, and ever shall remain.But, oh! commit not thy prophetic mindTo flitting leaves, the sport of every wind,Lest they disperse in air our empty fate;Write not, but, what the powers ordain, relate."Struggling in vain, impatient of her load,And labouring underneath the ponderous god,The more she strove to shake him from her breast,With more and far superior force he pressed;Commands his entrance, and, without controul,Usurps her organs, and inspires her soul.Now, with a furious blast, the hundred doors}Ope of themselves; a rushing whirlwind roars}Within the cave, and Sibyl's voice restores:—}"Escaped the dangers of the watery reign,Yet more and greater ills by land remain.The coast, so long desired, (nor doubt the event,)Thy troops shall reach, but, having reached, repent.Wars, horrid wars, I view—a field of blood,And Tyber rolling with a purple flood.Simoïs nor Xanthus shall be wanting there:A new Achilles shall in arms appear,And he, too, goddess-born. Fierce Juno's hate,Added to hostile force, shall urge thy fate.To what strange nations shalt not thou resort,Driven to solicit aid at every court!The cause the same which Ilium once oppressed—A foreign mistress, and a foreign guest.But thou, secure of soul, unbent with woes,The more thy fortune frowns, the more oppose.The dawnings of thy safety shall be shown,From, whence thou least shall hope, a Grecian town."Thus, from the dark recess, the Sibyl spoke,}And the resisting air the thunder broke;}The cave rebellowed, and the temple shook.}The ambiguous god, who ruled her labouring breast,}In these mysterious words his mind expressed;}Some truths revealed, in terms involved the rest.}At length her fury fell, her foaming ceased,And, ebbing in her soul, the god decreased.Then thus the chief:—"No terror to my view,No frightful face of danger, can be new.Inured to suffer, and resolved to dare,The Fates, without my power, shall be without my care.This let me crave—since near your grove the road}To hell lies open, and the dark abode,}Which Acheron surrounds, the innavigable flood—}Conduct me through the regions void of light,And lead me longing to my father's sight.For him, a thousand dangers I have sought,}And, rushing where the thickest Grecians fought,}Safe on my back the sacred burden brought.}He, for my sake, the raging ocean tried,}And wrath of heaven, (my still auspicious guide,)}And bore, beyond the strength decrepit age supplied.}Oft, since he breathed his last, in dead of night,His reverend image stood before my sight;Enjoined to seek, below, his holy shade—Conducted there by your unerring aid.But you, if pious minds by prayers are won,Oblige the father, and protect the son.Yours is the power; nor Proserpine in vainHas made you priestess of her nightly reign.If Orpheus, armed with his enchanting lyre,The ruthless king with pity could inspire,And from the shades below redeem his wife;If Pollux, offering his alternate life,Could free his brother, and can daily goBy turns aloft, by turns descend below;—Why name I Theseus, or his greater friend,Who trod the downward path, and upward could ascend?Not less than theirs, from Jove my lineage came;My mother greater, my descent the same."So prayed the Trojan prince, and, while he prayed,His hand upon the holy altar laid.Then thus replied the prophetess divine:—"O goddess-born, of great Anchises' line!The gates of hell are open night and day;Smooth the descent, and easy is the way:But, to return, and view the cheerful skies—In this the task and mighty labour lies.To few great Jupiter imparts this grace,And those of shining worth, and heavenly race.Betwixt those regions and our upper light,Deep forests and impenetrable nightPossess the middle space: the infernal boundsCocytus, with his sable waves, surrounds.But, if so dire a love your soul invades,As twice below to view the trembling shades;If you so hard a toil will undertake,As twice to pass the innavigable lake;Receive my counsel. In the neighbouring groveThere stands a tree; the queen of Stygian JoveClaims it her own; thick woods and gloomy nightConceal the happy plant from human sight.One bough it bears; but (wonderous to behold!)The ductile rind and leaves of radiant gold:This from the vulgar branches must be torn,And to fair Proserpine the present borne,Ere leave be given to tempt the nether skies.}The first thus rent, a second will arise,}And the same metal the same room supplies.}Look round the wood, with lifted eyes, to seeThe lurking gold upon the fatal tree:Then rend it off, as holy rites command;The willing metal will obey thy hand,Following with ease, if, favoured by thy fate,Thou art foredoomed to view the Stygian state:If not, no labour can the tree constrain;And strength of stubborn arms, and steel, are vain.Besides, you know not, while you here attend,The unworthy fate of your unhappy friend:Breathless he lies; and his unburied ghost,Deprived of funeral rites, pollutes your host.Pay first his pious dues; and, for the dead,Two sable sheep around his hearse be led;Then, living turfs upon his body lay:}This done, securely take the destined way,}To find the regions destitute of day."}She said, and held her peace.—Æneas went}Sad from the cave, and full of discontent,}Unknowing whom the sacred Sibyl meant.}Achates, the companion of his breast,Goes grieving by his side, with equal cares oppressed.Walking, they talked, and fruitlessly divined,What friend the priestess by those words designed.But soon they found an object to deplore:Misenus lay extended on the shore—Son of the god of winds:—none so renowned,The warrior trumpet in the field to sound,With breathing brass to kindle fierce alarms,And rouse to dare their fate in honourable arms.He served great Hector, and was ever near,Not with his trumpet only, but his spear.But, by Pelides' arms when Hector fell,He chose Æneas; and he chose as well.Swoln with applause, and aiming still at more,He now provokes the sea-gods from the shore.With envy, Triton heard the martial sound,And the bold champion, for his challenge, drowned;Then cast his mangled carcase on the strand:—The gazing crowd around the body stand.All weep; but most Æneas mourns his fate,And hastens to perform the funeral state.In altar-wise, a stately pile they rear;The basis broad below, and top advanced in air.An ancient wood, fit for the work designed,(The shady covert of the savage kind,)The Trojans found: the sounding axe is plied;Firs, pines, and pitch trees, and the towering prideOf forest ashes, feel the fatal stroke,And piercing wedges cleave the stubborn oak.Huge trunks of trees, felled from the steepy crownOf the bare mountains, roll with ruin down.Armed like the rest the Trojan prince appears,And, by his pious labour, urges theirs.Thus while he wrought, revolving in his mindThe ways to compass what his wish designed,He cast his eyes upon the gloomy grove,And then with vows implored the queen of love:—"O! may thy power, propitious still to me,Conduct my steps to find the fatal tree,In this deep forest; since the Sibyl's breathForetold, alas! too true, Misenus' death."Scarce had he said, when, full before his sight,}Two doves, descending from their airy flight,}Secure upon the grassy plain alight.}He knew his mother's birds; and thus he prayed:—"Be you my guides, with your auspicious aid,And lead my footsteps, till the branch be found,Whose glittering shadow gilds the sacred ground.And thou, great parent! with celestial care,In this distress, be present to my prayer."Thus having said, he stopped, with watchful sight,Observing still the motions of their flight,What course they took, what happy signs they shew.}They fed, and, fluttering, by degrees withdrew}Still farther from the place, but still in view:}Hopping and flying thus, they led him onTo the slow lake, whose baleful stench to shun,They winged their flight aloft, then, stooping low,Perched on the double tree, that bears the golden bough.Through the green leaves the glittering shadows glow;As, on the sacred oak, the wintery misletoe,Where the proud mother views her precious brood;And happier branches, which she never sowed.Such was the glittering; such the ruddy rind,And dancing leaves, that wantoned in the wind.He seized the shining bough with griping hold,And rent away, with ease, the lingering gold,Then to the Sibyl's palace bore the prize.}Meantime, the Trojan troops, with weeping eyes,}To dead Misenus pay his obsequies.}First, from the ground, a lofty pile they rear,Of pitch-trees, oaks, and pines, and unctuous fir:The fabric's front with cypress twigs they strew,And stick the sides with boughs of baleful yew.The topmost part his glittering arms adorn;Warm waters, then, in brazen cauldrons borne,Are poured to wash his body, joint by joint,And fragrant oils the stiffened limbs anoint.With groans and cries Misenus they deplore;Then on a bier, with purple covered o'er,The breathless body, thus bewailed, they lay,}And fire the pile, their faces turned away:}(Such reverent rites their fathers used to pay.)}Pure oil and incense on the fire they throw,And fat of victims, which his friends bestow.These gifts the greedy flames to dust devour;Then, on the living coals, red wine they pour;And, last, the reliques by themselves dispose,Which in a brazen urn the priests inclose.Old Corynæus compassed thrice the crew,And dipped an olive-branch in holy dew;Which thrice he sprinkled round, and thrice aloudInvoked the dead, and then dismissed the crowd.But good Æneas ordered on the shore}A stately tomb, whose top a trumpet bore,}A soldier's faulchion, and a seaman's oar.}Thus was his friend interred; and deathless fameStill to the lofty cape consigns his name.These rites performed, the prince, without delay,Hastes, to the nether world, his destined way.Deep was the cave; and, downward as it wentFrom the wide mouth, a rocky rough descent;And here the access a gloomy grove defends,And here the innavigable lake extends,O'er whose unhappy waters, void of light,No bird presumes to steer his airy flight;Such deadly stenches from the depth arise,And steaming sulphur, that infects the skies.From hence the Grecian bards their legends make,And give the name Avernus to the lake.Four sable bullocks, in the yoke untaught,For sacrifice the pious hero brought.The priestess pours the wine betwixt their horns;Then cuts the curling hair; that first oblation burns,Invoking Hecat hither to repair—A powerful name in hell and upper air.The sacred priests, with ready knives, bereaveThe beasts of life, and in full bowls receiveThe streaming blood: a lamb to Hell and Night(The sable wool without a streak of white)Æneas offers; and, by Fate's decree,A barren heifer, Proserpine, to thee.With holocausts he Pluto's altar fills:Seven brawny bulls with his own hand he kills:Then, on the broiling entrails, oil he pours;Which, ointed thus, the raging flame devours.Late the nocturnal sacrifice begun,Nor ended, till the next returning sun.Then earth began to bellow, trees to dance,And howling dogs in glimmering light advance,Ere Hecat came.—"Far hence be souls prophane!"The Sibyl cryed—"and from the grove abstain!Now, Trojan, take the way thy fates afford;Assume thy courage, and unsheath thy sword."She said, and passed along the gloomy space;The prince pursued her steps with equal pace.Ye realms, yet unrevealed to human sightYe gods, who rule the regions of the night!Ye gliding ghosts! permit me to relateThe mystic wonders of your silent state.Obscure they went through dreary shades, that ledAlong the waste dominions of the dead.Thus wander travellers in woods by night,By the moon's doubtful and malignant light,When Jove in dusky clouds involves the skies,And the faint crescent shoots by fits before their eyes.Just in the gate, and in the jaws of hell,Revengeful Cares and sullen Sorrows dwell,And pale Diseases, and repining Age,Want, Fear, and Famine's unresisted rage;Here Toils, and Death, and Deaths half-brother, Sleep,(Forms terrible to view) their centry keep;With anxious Pleasures of a guilty mind,Deep Frauds before, and open Force behind;The Furies' iron beds; and Strife, that shakesHer hissing tresses, and unfolds her snakes.Full in the midst of this infernal road,An elm displays her dusky arms abroad:The god of sleep there hides his heavy head,And empty dreams on every leaf are spread.Of various forms unnumbered spectres more,Centaurs, and double shapes, besiege the door.Before the passage, horrid Hydra stands,And Briareus with all his hundred hands;Gorgons, Geryon with his triple frame;And vain Chimæra vomits empty flame.The chief unsheathed his shining steel, prepared,Though seized with sudden fear, to force the guard,Offering his brandished weapon at their face;Had not the Sibyl stopped his eager pace,And told him what those empty phantoms were—Forms without bodies, and impassive air.Hence to deep Acheron they take their way,Whose troubled eddies, thick with ooze and clay,Are whirled aloft, and in Cocytus lost:There Charon stands, who rules the dreary coast—A sordid god: down from his hoary chinA length of beard descends, uncombed, unclean:His eyes, like hollow furnaces on fire;A girdle, foul with grease, binds his obscene attire.He spreads his canvas; with his pole he steers;The freights of flitting ghosts in his thin bottom bears.He looked in years; yet, in his years, were seenA youthful vigour, and autumnal green.An airy crowd came rushing where he stood,Which filled the margin of the fatal flood—Husbands and wives, boys and unmarried maids,And mighty heroes' more majestic shades,And youths, entombed before their father's eyes,With hollow groans, and shrieks, and feeble cries.Thick as the leaves in autumn strow the woods,Or fowls, by winter forced, forsake the floods,And wing their hasty flight to happier lands—}Such, and so thick, the shivering army stands,}And press for passage with extended hands.}Now these, now those, the surly boatman bore:The rest he drove to distance from the shore.The hero, who beheld, with wondering eyes,The tumult mixed with shrieks, laments, and cries,Asked of his guide, what the rude concourse meant?Why to the shore the thronging people bent?What forms of law among the ghosts were used?Why some were ferried o'er, and some refused?"Son of Anchises! offspring of the gods!(The Sibyl said) you see the Stygian floods,The sacred streams, which heaven's imperial stateAttests in oaths, and fears to violate.The ghosts rejected are the unhappy crewDeprived of sepulchres and funeral due:The boatman, Charon; those, the buried host,He ferries over to the farther coast;Nor dares his transport vessel cross the wavesWith such whose bones are not composed in graves.A hundred years they wander on the shore;At length, their penance done, are wafted o'er."The Trojan chief his forward pace repressed,Revolving anxious thoughts within his breast.He saw his friends, who, whelmed beneath the waves;Their funeral honours claimed, and asked their quiet graves.The lost Leucaspis in the crowd he knew,And the brave leader of the Lycian crew,Whom, on the Tyrrhene seas, the tempests met;The sailors mastered, and the ship o'erset.Amidst the spirits, Palinurus pressed,Yet fresh from life, a new-admitted guest,Who, while he steering viewed the stars, and boreHis course from Afric to the Latian shore,Fell headlong down. The Trojan fixed his view,And scarcely through the gloom the sullen shadow knew.Then thus the prince:—"What envious power, O friend!Brought your loved life to this disastrous end?For Phœbus, ever true in all he said,Has, in your fate alone, my faith betrayed.The god foretold you should not die, beforeYou reached, secure from seas, the Italian shore.Is this the unerring power?"—The ghost replied:"Nor Phœbus flattered, nor his answers lied;Nor envious gods have sent me to the deep:}But, while the stars and course of heaven I keep,}My wearied eyes were seized with fatal sleep.}I fell; and, with my weight, the helm constrainedWas drawn along, which yet my gripe retained.Now by the winds and raging waves I swear,Your safety, more than mine, was then my care;Lest, of the guide bereft, the rudder lost,Your ship should run against the rocky coast.Three blustering nights, borne by the southern blast,I floated, and discovered land at last:High on a mounting wave, my head I bore,Forcing my strength, and gathering to the shore.Panting, but past the danger, now I seizedThe craggy cliffs, and my tired members eased.While, cumbered with my dropping clothes, I lay,The cruel nation, covetous of prey,Stained with my blood the unhospitable coast;And now, by winds and waves, my lifeless limbs are tossed:Which, O! avert, by yon etherial light,Which I have lost for this eternal night:Or, if by dearer ties you may be won,By your dead sire, and by your living son,Redeem from this reproach my wandering ghost.Or with your navy seek the Velin coast,And in a peaceful grave my corpse compose;Or, if a nearer way your mother shows,(Without whose aid, you durst not undertakeThis frightful passage o'er the Stygian lake,)Lend to this wretch your hand, and waft him o'erTo the sweet banks of yon forbidden shore."Scarce had he said; the prophetess began:—"What hopes delude thee, miserable man?Think'st thou, thus unintombed, to cross the floods,}To view the Furies and infernal gods,}And visit, without leave, the dark abodes?}Attend the term of long revolving years;Fate, and the dooming gods, are deaf to tears.[106]This comfort of thy dire misfortune take—The wrath of heaven, inflicted for thy sake,With vengeance shall pursue the inhuman coast,Till they propitiate thy offended ghost,And raise a tomb, with vows and solemn prayer;And Palinurus' name the place shall bear."This calmed his cares; soothed with his future fame,And pleased to hear his propagated name.Now nearer to the Stygian lake they draw:Whom, from the shore, the surly boatman saw;Observed their passage through the shady wood,And marked their near approaches to the flood:Then thus he called aloud, inflamed with wrath:—"Mortal, whate'er, who this forbidden pathIn arms presum'st to tread! I charge thee, stand,And tell thy name, and business in the land.Know, this the realm of night—the Stygian shore:My boat conveys no living bodies o'er;Nor was I pleased great Theseus once to bear,(Who forced a passage with his pointed spear,)Nor strong Alcides—men of mighty fame,And from the immortal gods their lineage came.In fetters one the barking porter tied,}And took him trembling from his sovereign's side:}Two sought by force to seize his beauteous bride."}To whom the Sibyl thus:—"Compose thy mind;Nor frauds are here contrived, nor force designed.Still may the dog the wandering troops constrain}Of airy ghosts, and vex the guilty train,}And with her grisly lord his lovely queen remain.}The Trojan chief, whose lineage is from Jove,}Much famed for arms, and more for filial love,}Is sent to seek his sire in your Elysian grove.}If neither piety, nor heaven's command,Can gain his passage to the Stygian strand,This fatal present shall prevail, at least"—Then shewed the shining bough, concealed within her vest.No more was needful: for the gloomy godStood mute with awe, to see the golden rod;Admired the destined offering to his queen—A venerable gift, so rarely seen.His fury thus appeased, he puts to land;The ghosts forsake their seats at his command:He clears the deck, receives the mighty freight;The leaky vessel groans beneath the weight.Slowly she[107]sails, and scarcely stems the tides;The pressing water pours within her sides.His passengers at length are wafted o'er,Exposed, in muddy weeds, upon the miry shore.No sooner landed, in his den they foundThe triple porter of the Stygian sound,Grim Cerberus, who soon began to rearHis crested snakes, and armed his bristling hair.The prudent Sibyl had before preparedA sop, in honey steeped, to charm the guard;Which, mixed with powerful drugs, she cast beforeHis greedy grinning jaws, just oped to roar.With three enormous mouths he gapes; and straight,With hunger pressed, devours the pleasing bait.Long draughts of sleep his monstrous limbs enslave;He reels, and, falling, fills the spacious cave.The keeper charmed, the chief without delayPassed on, and took the irremeable way.Before the gates, the cries of babes new born,Whom Fate had from their tender mothers torn,Assault his ears: then those, whom form of lawsCondemned to die, when traitors judged their cause.Nor want they lots, nor judges to reviewThe wrongful sentence, and award a new.Minos, the strict inquisitor, appears;And lives and crimes, with his assessors, hears.Round, in his urn, the blended balls he rolls,Absolves the just, and dooms the guilty souls.The next, in place and punishment, are theyWho prodigally throw their souls away—[108]Fools, who, repining at their wretched state,And loathing anxious life, suborned their fate.With late repentance, now they would retrieveThe bodies they forsook, and wish to live;Their pains and poverty desire to bear,To view the light of heaven, and breathe the vital air:But Fate forbids; the Stygian floods oppose,And, with nine circling streams, the captive souls inclose.Not far from thence, the Mournful Fields appear,So called from lovers that inhabit there.The souls, whom that unhappy flame invades,In secret solitude and myrtle shadesMake endless moans, and, pining with desire,Lament too late their unextinguished fire.Here Procris, Eriphyle here he foundBaring her breast, yet bleeding with the woundMade by her son. He saw Pasiphaë there,With Phædra's ghost, a foul incestuous pair.There Laodamia, with Evadne, moves—Unhappy both, but loyal in their loves:Cæneus, a woman once, and once a man,But ending in the sex she first began.Not far from these Phœnician Dido stood,Fresh from her wound, her bosom bathed in blood;Whom when the Trojan hero hardly knew,Obscure in shades, and with a doubtful view,(Doubtful as he who sees, through dusky night,Or thinks he sees, the moon's uncertain light,)With tears he first approached the sullen shade;And, as his love inspired him, thus he said;—"Unhappy queen! then is the common breathOf rumour true, in your reported death,And I, alas! the cause?—By heaven, I vow,And all the powers that rule the realms below,Unwilling I forsook your friendly state,Commanded by the gods, and forced by Fate—Those gods, that Fate, whose unresisted might}Have sent me to these regions void of light}Through the vast empire of eternal night.}Nor dared I to presume, that, pressed with grief,My flight should urge you to this dire relief.Stay, stay your steps, and listen to my vows!'Tis the last interview that Fate allows!"In vain he thus attempts her mind to moveWith tears and prayers, and late-repenting love.Disdainfully she looked; then turning round,But fixed her eyes unmoved upon the ground,And, what he says and swears, regards no more,Than the deaf rocks, when the loud billows roar;But whirled away, to shun his hateful sight,Hid in the forest, and the shades of night;Then sought Sichæus through the shady grove,Who answered all her cares, and equalled all her love.Some pious tears the pitying hero paid,And followed with his eyes the flitting shade,Then took the forward way, by Fate ordained,}And, with his guide, the farther fields attained,}Where, severed from the rest, the warrior souls remained.}Tydeus he met, with Meleager's race,}The pride of armies, and the soldiers' grace;}And pale Adrastus with his ghastly face.}Of Trojan chiefs he viewed a numerous train,All much lamented, all in battle slain—Glaucus and Medon, high above the rest,Antenor's sons, and Ceres' sacred priest.And proud Idæus, Priam's charioteer,Who shakes his empty reins, and aims his airy spear.The gladsome ghosts, in circling troops, attend,And with unwearied eyes behold their friend;Delight to hover near, and long to knowWhat business brought him to the realms below.But Argive chiefs, and Agamemnon's train,When his refulgent arms flashed through the shady plain,Fled from his well known face, with wonted fear,}As when his thundering sword and pointed spear}Drove headlong to their ships, and gleaned the routed rear.}They raised a feeble cry, with trembling notes;But the weak voice deceived their gasping throats.Here Priam's son, Deïphobus, he found,Whose face and limbs were one continued wound.Dishonest, with lopped arms, the youth appears,Spoiled of his nose, and shortened of his ears.He scarcely knew him, striving to disownHis blotted form, and blushing to be known;And therefore first began:—"O Teucer's race!}Who durst thy faultless figure thus deface?}What heart could wish, what hand inflict, this dire disgrace?}'Twas famed, that, in our last and fatal night,Your single prowess long sustained the fight,Till, tired, not forced, a glorious fate you chose,And fell upon a heap of slaughtered foes.But, in remembrance of so brave a deed,A tomb and funeral honours I decreed;Thrice called your manes on the Trojan plains:The place your armour and your name retains.Your body too I sought, and, had I found,Designed for burial in your native ground."The ghost replied:—"Your piety has paidAll needful rites, to rest my wandering shade:But cruel Fate, and my more cruel wife,To Grecian swords betrayed my sleeping life.These are the monuments of Helen's love—The shame I bear below, the marks I bore above.You know in what deluding joys we pastThe night, that was by heaven decreed our last.For, when the fatal horse, descending down,Pregnant with arms, o'erwhelmed the unhappy town,She feigned nocturnal orgies; left my bed,And, mixed with Trojan dames, the dances led;Then, waving high her torch, the signal made,Which roused the Grecians from their ambuscade.With watching overworn, with cares oppressed,}Unhappy I had laid me down to rest,}And heavy sleep my weary limbs possessed.}Meantime my worthy wife our arms mislaid,And, from beneath my head, my sword conveyed;The door unlatched, and, with repeated calls,Invites her former lord within my walls.Thus in her crime her confidence she placed,And with new treasons would redeem the past.What need I more? Into the room they ran,And meanly murdered a defenceless man.Ulysses, basely born, first led the way.—}Avenging powers! with justice if I pray,}That fortune be their own another day!—}But answer you; and in your turn relate,What brought you, living, to the Stygian state.Driven by the winds and errors of the sea,}Or did you heaven's superior doom obey?}Or tell what other chance conducts your way,}To view, with mortal eyes, our dark retreats,Tumults and torments of the infernal seats."While thus, in talk, the flying hours they pass,The sun had finished more than half his race:And they, perhaps, in words and tears had spentThe little time of stay which heaven had lent:But thus the Sibyl chides their long delay:—"Night rushes down, and headlong drives the day:'Tis here, in different paths, the way divides;The right to Pluto's golden palace guides;The left to that unhappy region tends,}Which to the depth of Tartarus descends—}The seat of night profound, and punished fiends."}Then thus Deïphobus:—"O sacred maid!Forbear to chide, and be your will obeyed.Lo! to the secret shadows I retire,To pay my penance till my years expire.[109]Proceed, auspicious prince, with glory crowned,And born to better fates than I have found."He said; and, while he said, his steps he turnedTo secret shadows, and in silence mourned.The hero, looking on the left, espiedA lofty tower, and strong on every sideWith treble walls, which Phlegethon surrounds,}Whose fiery flood the burning empire bounds;}And, pressed betwixt the rocks, the bellowing noise resounds.}Wide is the fronting gate, and, raised on highWith adamantine columns, threats the sky.Vain is the force of man, and heaven's as vain,To crush the pillars which the pile sustain.Sublime on these a tower of steel is reared;And dire Tysiphone there keeps the ward,Girt in her sanguine gown, by night and day,Observant of the souls that pass the downward way.From hence are heard the groans of ghosts, the painsOf sounding lashes, and of dragging chains.The Trojan stood astonished at their cries,And asked his guide, from whence those yells arise;And what the crimes, and what the tortures were,And loud laments, that rent the liquid air.She thus replied:—"The chaste and holy raceAre all forbidden this polluted place.But Hecat, when she gave to rule the woods,}Then led me trembling through these dire abodes,}And taught the tortures of the avenging gods.}These are the realms of unrelenting Fate;And awful Rhadamanthus rules the state.He hears and judges each committed crime;Inquires into the manner, place, and time.The conscious wretch must all his acts reveal,(Loth to confess, unable to conceal,)From the first moment of his vital breath,To his last hour of unrepenting death.Straight, o'er the guilty ghost, the Fury shakes}The sounding whip, and brandishes her snakes,}And the pale sinner, with her sisters, takes.}Then, of itself, unfolds the eternal door;With dreadful sounds the brazen hinges roar.You see before the gate, what stalking ghostCommands the guard, what centries keep the post.More formidable Hydra stands within,Whose jaws with iron teeth severely grin.The gaping gulf low to the centre lies,And twice as deep, as earth is distant from the skies.The rivals of the gods, the Titan race,Here, singed with lightning, roll within the unfathomed space.Here lie the Aloëan twins, (I saw them both,)Enormous bodies, of gigantic growth,Who dared in fight the Thunderer to defy,Affect his heaven, and force him from the sky.Salmoneus, suffering cruel pains, I found,For emulating Jove with rattling soundOf mimic thunder, and the glittering blazeOf pointed lightnings, and their forky rays.Through Elis, and the Grecian towns, he flew:The audacious wretch four fiery coursers drew:He waved a torch aloft, and, madly vain,Sought god-like worship from a servile train.Ambitious fool! with horny hoofs to passO'er hollow arches of resounding brass,To rival thunder in its rapid course,And imitate inimitable force!But he, the king of heaven, obscure on high,Bared his red arm, and, launching from the skyHis writhen bolt, not shaking empty smoke,Down to the deep abyss the flaming felon struck.There Tityus was to see, who took his birthFrom heaven, his nursing from the foodful earth.Here his gigantic limbs, with large embrace,Infold nine acres of infernal space.A ravenous vulture, in his opened side,Her crooked beak and cruel talons tried;Still for the growing liver digged his breast;The growing liver still supplied the feast;Still are his entrails fruitful to their pains:The immortal hunger lasts, the immortal food remains.Ixion and Pirithoüs I could name,And more Thessalian chiefs of mighty fame.High o'er their heads a mouldering rock is placed,That promises a fall, and shakes at every blast.They lie below, on golden beds displayed;And genial feasts with regal pomp are made.The queen of Furies by their sides is set,And snatches from their mouths the untasted meat,Which if they touch, her hissing snakes she rears,Tossing her torch, and thundering in their ears.Then they, who brothers' better claim disown,Expel their parents, and usurp the throne;Defraud their clients, and, to lucre sold,Sit brooding on unprofitable gold—Who dare not give, and even refuse to lend,To their poor kindred, or a wanting friend—Vast is the throng of these; nor less the trainOf lustful youths, for foul adultery slain—Hosts of deserters, who their honour sold,And basely broke their faith for bribes of gold.All these within the dungeon's depth remain,Despairing pardon, and expecting pain.Ask not what pains; nor farther seek to knowTheir process, or the forms of law below.Some roll a mighty stone; some, laid along,And bound with burning wires, on spokes of wheels are hung.Unhappy Theseus, doomed for ever there,Is fixed by Fate on his eternal chair:And wretched Phlegyas warns the world with cries,}(Could warning make the world more just or wise,)}'Learn righteousness, and dread the avenging deities.'}To tyrants others have their country sold,Imposing foreign lords, for foreign gold:Some have old laws repealed, new statutes made,Not as the people pleased, but as they paid.With incest some their daughters' bed profaned.
He said, and wept; then spread his sails before}The winds, and reached at length the Cuman shore:}Their anchors dropped, his crew the vessels moor.}They turn their heads to sea, their sterns to land,And greet with greedy joy the Italian strand.Some strike from clashing flints their fiery seed;Some gather sticks, the kindled flames to feed,Or search for hollow trees, and fell the woods,Or trace through valleys the discovered floods.Thus while their several charges they fulfil,The pious prince ascends the sacred hillWhere Phœbus is adored; and seeks the shade,Which hides from sight his venerable maid.Deep in a cave the Sibyl makes abode;Thence full of Fate returns, and of the god.Through Trivia's grove they walk; and now behold,And enter now, the temple roofed with gold.When Dædalus, to fly the Cretan shore,His heavy limbs on jointed pinions bore,(The first who sailed in air,) 'tis sung by Fame,}To the Cumæan coast at length he came,}And, here alighting, built this costly frame.}Inscribed to Phœbus, here he hung on highThe steerage of his wings, that cut the sky:Then, o'er the lofty gate, his art embossedAndrogeos' death, and (offerings to his ghost)Seven youths from Athens yearly sent, to meetThe fate appointed by revengeful Crete.And next to these the dreadful urn was placed,In which the destined names by lots were cast:The mournful parents stand around in tears,And rising Crete against their shore appears.There too, in living sculpture, might be seenThe mad affection of the Cretan queen;Then how she cheats her bellowing lover's eye;The rushing leap, the doubtful progeny—The lower part a beast, a man above—The monument of their polluted love.Nor far from thence he graved the wonderous maze,A thousand doors, a thousand winding ways:Here dwells the monster, hid from human view,Not to be found, but by the faithful clue;Till the kind artist, moved with pious grief,Lent to the loving maid this last relief,And all those erring paths described so well,That Theseus conquered, and the monster fell.Here hapless Icarus had found his part,Had not the father's grief restrained his art.He twice essayed to cast his son in gold;Twice from his hands he dropped the forming mould.All this with wondering eyes Æneas viewed:Each varying object his delight renewed.Eager to read the rest...Achates came,}And by his side the mad divining dame,}The priestess of the god, Deïphobe her name.}"Time suffers not," she said, "to feed your eyesWith empty pleasures; haste the sacrifice.Seven bullocks, yet unyoked, for Phœbus chuse,And for Diana seven unspotted ewes."This said, the servants urge the sacred rites,While to the temple she the prince invites.A spacious cave, within its farmost part,Was hewed and fashioned by laborious art,Through the hill's hollow sides: before the place,A hundred doors a hundred entries grace:As many voices issue, and the soundOf Sibyl's words as many times rebound.Now to the mouth they come. Aloud she cries,—"This is the time! inquire your destinies!He comes! behold the god!" Thus while she said,(And shivering at the sacred entry staid,)Her colour changed; her face was not the same,And hollow groans from her deep spirit came.Her hair stood up; convulsive rage possessedHer trembling limbs, and heaved her labouring breast.Greater than human kind she seemed to look,And, with an accent more than mortal, spoke.Her staring eyes with sparkling fury roll,When all the god came rushing on her soul.Swiftly she turned, and, foaming as she spoke,—"Why this delay?" she cried—"the powers invoke.Thy prayers alone can open this abode;Else vain are my demands, and dumb the god."She said no more. The trembling Trojans hear,O'er-spread with a damp sweat, and holy fear.The prince himself, with awful dread possessed,His vows to great Apollo thus addressed:—"Indulgent god! propitious power to Troy,Swift to relieve, unwilling to destroy!Directed by whose hand, the Dardan dartPierced the proud Grecian's only mortal part!Thus far, by Fate's decrees and thy commands,Through ambient seas and through devouring sands,Our exiled crew has sought the Ausonian ground;And now, at length, the flying coast is found.Thus far the fate of Troy, from place to place,With fury has pursued her wandering race.Here cease, ye powers, and let your vengeance end:Troy is no more, and can no more offend.And thou, O sacred maid, inspired to seeThe event of things in dark futurity!Give me, what heaven has promised to my fate,To conquer and command the Latian state;To fix my wandering gods, and find a placeFor the long exiles of the Trojan race.Then shall my grateful hands a temple rearTo the twin gods, with vows and solemn prayer;And annual rites, and festivals, and games,Shall be performed to their auspicious names.Nor shalt thou want thy honours in my land;For there thy faithful oracles shall stand,Preserved in shrines; and every sacred lay,Which, by thy mouth, Apollo shall convey—-All shall be treasured by a chosen trainOf holy priests, and ever shall remain.But, oh! commit not thy prophetic mindTo flitting leaves, the sport of every wind,Lest they disperse in air our empty fate;Write not, but, what the powers ordain, relate."Struggling in vain, impatient of her load,And labouring underneath the ponderous god,The more she strove to shake him from her breast,With more and far superior force he pressed;Commands his entrance, and, without controul,Usurps her organs, and inspires her soul.Now, with a furious blast, the hundred doors}Ope of themselves; a rushing whirlwind roars}Within the cave, and Sibyl's voice restores:—}"Escaped the dangers of the watery reign,Yet more and greater ills by land remain.The coast, so long desired, (nor doubt the event,)Thy troops shall reach, but, having reached, repent.Wars, horrid wars, I view—a field of blood,And Tyber rolling with a purple flood.Simoïs nor Xanthus shall be wanting there:A new Achilles shall in arms appear,And he, too, goddess-born. Fierce Juno's hate,Added to hostile force, shall urge thy fate.To what strange nations shalt not thou resort,Driven to solicit aid at every court!The cause the same which Ilium once oppressed—A foreign mistress, and a foreign guest.But thou, secure of soul, unbent with woes,The more thy fortune frowns, the more oppose.The dawnings of thy safety shall be shown,From, whence thou least shall hope, a Grecian town."Thus, from the dark recess, the Sibyl spoke,}And the resisting air the thunder broke;}The cave rebellowed, and the temple shook.}The ambiguous god, who ruled her labouring breast,}In these mysterious words his mind expressed;}Some truths revealed, in terms involved the rest.}At length her fury fell, her foaming ceased,And, ebbing in her soul, the god decreased.Then thus the chief:—"No terror to my view,No frightful face of danger, can be new.Inured to suffer, and resolved to dare,The Fates, without my power, shall be without my care.This let me crave—since near your grove the road}To hell lies open, and the dark abode,}Which Acheron surrounds, the innavigable flood—}Conduct me through the regions void of light,And lead me longing to my father's sight.For him, a thousand dangers I have sought,}And, rushing where the thickest Grecians fought,}Safe on my back the sacred burden brought.}He, for my sake, the raging ocean tried,}And wrath of heaven, (my still auspicious guide,)}And bore, beyond the strength decrepit age supplied.}Oft, since he breathed his last, in dead of night,His reverend image stood before my sight;Enjoined to seek, below, his holy shade—Conducted there by your unerring aid.But you, if pious minds by prayers are won,Oblige the father, and protect the son.Yours is the power; nor Proserpine in vainHas made you priestess of her nightly reign.If Orpheus, armed with his enchanting lyre,The ruthless king with pity could inspire,And from the shades below redeem his wife;If Pollux, offering his alternate life,Could free his brother, and can daily goBy turns aloft, by turns descend below;—Why name I Theseus, or his greater friend,Who trod the downward path, and upward could ascend?Not less than theirs, from Jove my lineage came;My mother greater, my descent the same."So prayed the Trojan prince, and, while he prayed,His hand upon the holy altar laid.Then thus replied the prophetess divine:—"O goddess-born, of great Anchises' line!The gates of hell are open night and day;Smooth the descent, and easy is the way:But, to return, and view the cheerful skies—In this the task and mighty labour lies.To few great Jupiter imparts this grace,And those of shining worth, and heavenly race.Betwixt those regions and our upper light,Deep forests and impenetrable nightPossess the middle space: the infernal boundsCocytus, with his sable waves, surrounds.But, if so dire a love your soul invades,As twice below to view the trembling shades;If you so hard a toil will undertake,As twice to pass the innavigable lake;Receive my counsel. In the neighbouring groveThere stands a tree; the queen of Stygian JoveClaims it her own; thick woods and gloomy nightConceal the happy plant from human sight.One bough it bears; but (wonderous to behold!)The ductile rind and leaves of radiant gold:This from the vulgar branches must be torn,And to fair Proserpine the present borne,Ere leave be given to tempt the nether skies.}The first thus rent, a second will arise,}And the same metal the same room supplies.}Look round the wood, with lifted eyes, to seeThe lurking gold upon the fatal tree:Then rend it off, as holy rites command;The willing metal will obey thy hand,Following with ease, if, favoured by thy fate,Thou art foredoomed to view the Stygian state:If not, no labour can the tree constrain;And strength of stubborn arms, and steel, are vain.Besides, you know not, while you here attend,The unworthy fate of your unhappy friend:Breathless he lies; and his unburied ghost,Deprived of funeral rites, pollutes your host.Pay first his pious dues; and, for the dead,Two sable sheep around his hearse be led;Then, living turfs upon his body lay:}This done, securely take the destined way,}To find the regions destitute of day."}She said, and held her peace.—Æneas went}Sad from the cave, and full of discontent,}Unknowing whom the sacred Sibyl meant.}Achates, the companion of his breast,Goes grieving by his side, with equal cares oppressed.Walking, they talked, and fruitlessly divined,What friend the priestess by those words designed.But soon they found an object to deplore:Misenus lay extended on the shore—Son of the god of winds:—none so renowned,The warrior trumpet in the field to sound,With breathing brass to kindle fierce alarms,And rouse to dare their fate in honourable arms.He served great Hector, and was ever near,Not with his trumpet only, but his spear.But, by Pelides' arms when Hector fell,He chose Æneas; and he chose as well.Swoln with applause, and aiming still at more,He now provokes the sea-gods from the shore.With envy, Triton heard the martial sound,And the bold champion, for his challenge, drowned;Then cast his mangled carcase on the strand:—The gazing crowd around the body stand.All weep; but most Æneas mourns his fate,And hastens to perform the funeral state.In altar-wise, a stately pile they rear;The basis broad below, and top advanced in air.An ancient wood, fit for the work designed,(The shady covert of the savage kind,)The Trojans found: the sounding axe is plied;Firs, pines, and pitch trees, and the towering prideOf forest ashes, feel the fatal stroke,And piercing wedges cleave the stubborn oak.Huge trunks of trees, felled from the steepy crownOf the bare mountains, roll with ruin down.Armed like the rest the Trojan prince appears,And, by his pious labour, urges theirs.Thus while he wrought, revolving in his mindThe ways to compass what his wish designed,He cast his eyes upon the gloomy grove,And then with vows implored the queen of love:—"O! may thy power, propitious still to me,Conduct my steps to find the fatal tree,In this deep forest; since the Sibyl's breathForetold, alas! too true, Misenus' death."Scarce had he said, when, full before his sight,}Two doves, descending from their airy flight,}Secure upon the grassy plain alight.}He knew his mother's birds; and thus he prayed:—"Be you my guides, with your auspicious aid,And lead my footsteps, till the branch be found,Whose glittering shadow gilds the sacred ground.And thou, great parent! with celestial care,In this distress, be present to my prayer."Thus having said, he stopped, with watchful sight,Observing still the motions of their flight,What course they took, what happy signs they shew.}They fed, and, fluttering, by degrees withdrew}Still farther from the place, but still in view:}Hopping and flying thus, they led him onTo the slow lake, whose baleful stench to shun,They winged their flight aloft, then, stooping low,Perched on the double tree, that bears the golden bough.Through the green leaves the glittering shadows glow;As, on the sacred oak, the wintery misletoe,Where the proud mother views her precious brood;And happier branches, which she never sowed.Such was the glittering; such the ruddy rind,And dancing leaves, that wantoned in the wind.He seized the shining bough with griping hold,And rent away, with ease, the lingering gold,Then to the Sibyl's palace bore the prize.}Meantime, the Trojan troops, with weeping eyes,}To dead Misenus pay his obsequies.}First, from the ground, a lofty pile they rear,Of pitch-trees, oaks, and pines, and unctuous fir:The fabric's front with cypress twigs they strew,And stick the sides with boughs of baleful yew.The topmost part his glittering arms adorn;Warm waters, then, in brazen cauldrons borne,Are poured to wash his body, joint by joint,And fragrant oils the stiffened limbs anoint.With groans and cries Misenus they deplore;Then on a bier, with purple covered o'er,The breathless body, thus bewailed, they lay,}And fire the pile, their faces turned away:}(Such reverent rites their fathers used to pay.)}Pure oil and incense on the fire they throw,And fat of victims, which his friends bestow.These gifts the greedy flames to dust devour;Then, on the living coals, red wine they pour;And, last, the reliques by themselves dispose,Which in a brazen urn the priests inclose.Old Corynæus compassed thrice the crew,And dipped an olive-branch in holy dew;Which thrice he sprinkled round, and thrice aloudInvoked the dead, and then dismissed the crowd.But good Æneas ordered on the shore}A stately tomb, whose top a trumpet bore,}A soldier's faulchion, and a seaman's oar.}Thus was his friend interred; and deathless fameStill to the lofty cape consigns his name.These rites performed, the prince, without delay,Hastes, to the nether world, his destined way.Deep was the cave; and, downward as it wentFrom the wide mouth, a rocky rough descent;And here the access a gloomy grove defends,And here the innavigable lake extends,O'er whose unhappy waters, void of light,No bird presumes to steer his airy flight;Such deadly stenches from the depth arise,And steaming sulphur, that infects the skies.From hence the Grecian bards their legends make,And give the name Avernus to the lake.Four sable bullocks, in the yoke untaught,For sacrifice the pious hero brought.The priestess pours the wine betwixt their horns;Then cuts the curling hair; that first oblation burns,Invoking Hecat hither to repair—A powerful name in hell and upper air.The sacred priests, with ready knives, bereaveThe beasts of life, and in full bowls receiveThe streaming blood: a lamb to Hell and Night(The sable wool without a streak of white)Æneas offers; and, by Fate's decree,A barren heifer, Proserpine, to thee.With holocausts he Pluto's altar fills:Seven brawny bulls with his own hand he kills:Then, on the broiling entrails, oil he pours;Which, ointed thus, the raging flame devours.Late the nocturnal sacrifice begun,Nor ended, till the next returning sun.Then earth began to bellow, trees to dance,And howling dogs in glimmering light advance,Ere Hecat came.—"Far hence be souls prophane!"The Sibyl cryed—"and from the grove abstain!Now, Trojan, take the way thy fates afford;Assume thy courage, and unsheath thy sword."She said, and passed along the gloomy space;The prince pursued her steps with equal pace.Ye realms, yet unrevealed to human sightYe gods, who rule the regions of the night!Ye gliding ghosts! permit me to relateThe mystic wonders of your silent state.Obscure they went through dreary shades, that ledAlong the waste dominions of the dead.Thus wander travellers in woods by night,By the moon's doubtful and malignant light,When Jove in dusky clouds involves the skies,And the faint crescent shoots by fits before their eyes.Just in the gate, and in the jaws of hell,Revengeful Cares and sullen Sorrows dwell,And pale Diseases, and repining Age,Want, Fear, and Famine's unresisted rage;Here Toils, and Death, and Deaths half-brother, Sleep,(Forms terrible to view) their centry keep;With anxious Pleasures of a guilty mind,Deep Frauds before, and open Force behind;The Furies' iron beds; and Strife, that shakesHer hissing tresses, and unfolds her snakes.Full in the midst of this infernal road,An elm displays her dusky arms abroad:The god of sleep there hides his heavy head,And empty dreams on every leaf are spread.Of various forms unnumbered spectres more,Centaurs, and double shapes, besiege the door.Before the passage, horrid Hydra stands,And Briareus with all his hundred hands;Gorgons, Geryon with his triple frame;And vain Chimæra vomits empty flame.The chief unsheathed his shining steel, prepared,Though seized with sudden fear, to force the guard,Offering his brandished weapon at their face;Had not the Sibyl stopped his eager pace,And told him what those empty phantoms were—Forms without bodies, and impassive air.Hence to deep Acheron they take their way,Whose troubled eddies, thick with ooze and clay,Are whirled aloft, and in Cocytus lost:There Charon stands, who rules the dreary coast—A sordid god: down from his hoary chinA length of beard descends, uncombed, unclean:His eyes, like hollow furnaces on fire;A girdle, foul with grease, binds his obscene attire.He spreads his canvas; with his pole he steers;The freights of flitting ghosts in his thin bottom bears.He looked in years; yet, in his years, were seenA youthful vigour, and autumnal green.An airy crowd came rushing where he stood,Which filled the margin of the fatal flood—Husbands and wives, boys and unmarried maids,And mighty heroes' more majestic shades,And youths, entombed before their father's eyes,With hollow groans, and shrieks, and feeble cries.Thick as the leaves in autumn strow the woods,Or fowls, by winter forced, forsake the floods,And wing their hasty flight to happier lands—}Such, and so thick, the shivering army stands,}And press for passage with extended hands.}Now these, now those, the surly boatman bore:The rest he drove to distance from the shore.The hero, who beheld, with wondering eyes,The tumult mixed with shrieks, laments, and cries,Asked of his guide, what the rude concourse meant?Why to the shore the thronging people bent?What forms of law among the ghosts were used?Why some were ferried o'er, and some refused?"Son of Anchises! offspring of the gods!(The Sibyl said) you see the Stygian floods,The sacred streams, which heaven's imperial stateAttests in oaths, and fears to violate.The ghosts rejected are the unhappy crewDeprived of sepulchres and funeral due:The boatman, Charon; those, the buried host,He ferries over to the farther coast;Nor dares his transport vessel cross the wavesWith such whose bones are not composed in graves.A hundred years they wander on the shore;At length, their penance done, are wafted o'er."The Trojan chief his forward pace repressed,Revolving anxious thoughts within his breast.He saw his friends, who, whelmed beneath the waves;Their funeral honours claimed, and asked their quiet graves.The lost Leucaspis in the crowd he knew,And the brave leader of the Lycian crew,Whom, on the Tyrrhene seas, the tempests met;The sailors mastered, and the ship o'erset.Amidst the spirits, Palinurus pressed,Yet fresh from life, a new-admitted guest,Who, while he steering viewed the stars, and boreHis course from Afric to the Latian shore,Fell headlong down. The Trojan fixed his view,And scarcely through the gloom the sullen shadow knew.Then thus the prince:—"What envious power, O friend!Brought your loved life to this disastrous end?For Phœbus, ever true in all he said,Has, in your fate alone, my faith betrayed.The god foretold you should not die, beforeYou reached, secure from seas, the Italian shore.Is this the unerring power?"—The ghost replied:"Nor Phœbus flattered, nor his answers lied;Nor envious gods have sent me to the deep:}But, while the stars and course of heaven I keep,}My wearied eyes were seized with fatal sleep.}I fell; and, with my weight, the helm constrainedWas drawn along, which yet my gripe retained.Now by the winds and raging waves I swear,Your safety, more than mine, was then my care;Lest, of the guide bereft, the rudder lost,Your ship should run against the rocky coast.Three blustering nights, borne by the southern blast,I floated, and discovered land at last:High on a mounting wave, my head I bore,Forcing my strength, and gathering to the shore.Panting, but past the danger, now I seizedThe craggy cliffs, and my tired members eased.While, cumbered with my dropping clothes, I lay,The cruel nation, covetous of prey,Stained with my blood the unhospitable coast;And now, by winds and waves, my lifeless limbs are tossed:Which, O! avert, by yon etherial light,Which I have lost for this eternal night:Or, if by dearer ties you may be won,By your dead sire, and by your living son,Redeem from this reproach my wandering ghost.Or with your navy seek the Velin coast,And in a peaceful grave my corpse compose;Or, if a nearer way your mother shows,(Without whose aid, you durst not undertakeThis frightful passage o'er the Stygian lake,)Lend to this wretch your hand, and waft him o'erTo the sweet banks of yon forbidden shore."Scarce had he said; the prophetess began:—"What hopes delude thee, miserable man?Think'st thou, thus unintombed, to cross the floods,}To view the Furies and infernal gods,}And visit, without leave, the dark abodes?}Attend the term of long revolving years;Fate, and the dooming gods, are deaf to tears.[106]This comfort of thy dire misfortune take—The wrath of heaven, inflicted for thy sake,With vengeance shall pursue the inhuman coast,Till they propitiate thy offended ghost,And raise a tomb, with vows and solemn prayer;And Palinurus' name the place shall bear."This calmed his cares; soothed with his future fame,And pleased to hear his propagated name.Now nearer to the Stygian lake they draw:Whom, from the shore, the surly boatman saw;Observed their passage through the shady wood,And marked their near approaches to the flood:Then thus he called aloud, inflamed with wrath:—"Mortal, whate'er, who this forbidden pathIn arms presum'st to tread! I charge thee, stand,And tell thy name, and business in the land.Know, this the realm of night—the Stygian shore:My boat conveys no living bodies o'er;Nor was I pleased great Theseus once to bear,(Who forced a passage with his pointed spear,)Nor strong Alcides—men of mighty fame,And from the immortal gods their lineage came.In fetters one the barking porter tied,}And took him trembling from his sovereign's side:}Two sought by force to seize his beauteous bride."}To whom the Sibyl thus:—"Compose thy mind;Nor frauds are here contrived, nor force designed.Still may the dog the wandering troops constrain}Of airy ghosts, and vex the guilty train,}And with her grisly lord his lovely queen remain.}The Trojan chief, whose lineage is from Jove,}Much famed for arms, and more for filial love,}Is sent to seek his sire in your Elysian grove.}If neither piety, nor heaven's command,Can gain his passage to the Stygian strand,This fatal present shall prevail, at least"—Then shewed the shining bough, concealed within her vest.No more was needful: for the gloomy godStood mute with awe, to see the golden rod;Admired the destined offering to his queen—A venerable gift, so rarely seen.His fury thus appeased, he puts to land;The ghosts forsake their seats at his command:He clears the deck, receives the mighty freight;The leaky vessel groans beneath the weight.Slowly she[107]sails, and scarcely stems the tides;The pressing water pours within her sides.His passengers at length are wafted o'er,Exposed, in muddy weeds, upon the miry shore.No sooner landed, in his den they foundThe triple porter of the Stygian sound,Grim Cerberus, who soon began to rearHis crested snakes, and armed his bristling hair.The prudent Sibyl had before preparedA sop, in honey steeped, to charm the guard;Which, mixed with powerful drugs, she cast beforeHis greedy grinning jaws, just oped to roar.With three enormous mouths he gapes; and straight,With hunger pressed, devours the pleasing bait.Long draughts of sleep his monstrous limbs enslave;He reels, and, falling, fills the spacious cave.The keeper charmed, the chief without delayPassed on, and took the irremeable way.Before the gates, the cries of babes new born,Whom Fate had from their tender mothers torn,Assault his ears: then those, whom form of lawsCondemned to die, when traitors judged their cause.Nor want they lots, nor judges to reviewThe wrongful sentence, and award a new.Minos, the strict inquisitor, appears;And lives and crimes, with his assessors, hears.Round, in his urn, the blended balls he rolls,Absolves the just, and dooms the guilty souls.The next, in place and punishment, are theyWho prodigally throw their souls away—[108]Fools, who, repining at their wretched state,And loathing anxious life, suborned their fate.With late repentance, now they would retrieveThe bodies they forsook, and wish to live;Their pains and poverty desire to bear,To view the light of heaven, and breathe the vital air:But Fate forbids; the Stygian floods oppose,And, with nine circling streams, the captive souls inclose.Not far from thence, the Mournful Fields appear,So called from lovers that inhabit there.The souls, whom that unhappy flame invades,In secret solitude and myrtle shadesMake endless moans, and, pining with desire,Lament too late their unextinguished fire.Here Procris, Eriphyle here he foundBaring her breast, yet bleeding with the woundMade by her son. He saw Pasiphaë there,With Phædra's ghost, a foul incestuous pair.There Laodamia, with Evadne, moves—Unhappy both, but loyal in their loves:Cæneus, a woman once, and once a man,But ending in the sex she first began.Not far from these Phœnician Dido stood,Fresh from her wound, her bosom bathed in blood;Whom when the Trojan hero hardly knew,Obscure in shades, and with a doubtful view,(Doubtful as he who sees, through dusky night,Or thinks he sees, the moon's uncertain light,)With tears he first approached the sullen shade;And, as his love inspired him, thus he said;—"Unhappy queen! then is the common breathOf rumour true, in your reported death,And I, alas! the cause?—By heaven, I vow,And all the powers that rule the realms below,Unwilling I forsook your friendly state,Commanded by the gods, and forced by Fate—Those gods, that Fate, whose unresisted might}Have sent me to these regions void of light}Through the vast empire of eternal night.}Nor dared I to presume, that, pressed with grief,My flight should urge you to this dire relief.Stay, stay your steps, and listen to my vows!'Tis the last interview that Fate allows!"In vain he thus attempts her mind to moveWith tears and prayers, and late-repenting love.Disdainfully she looked; then turning round,But fixed her eyes unmoved upon the ground,And, what he says and swears, regards no more,Than the deaf rocks, when the loud billows roar;But whirled away, to shun his hateful sight,Hid in the forest, and the shades of night;Then sought Sichæus through the shady grove,Who answered all her cares, and equalled all her love.Some pious tears the pitying hero paid,And followed with his eyes the flitting shade,Then took the forward way, by Fate ordained,}And, with his guide, the farther fields attained,}Where, severed from the rest, the warrior souls remained.}Tydeus he met, with Meleager's race,}The pride of armies, and the soldiers' grace;}And pale Adrastus with his ghastly face.}Of Trojan chiefs he viewed a numerous train,All much lamented, all in battle slain—Glaucus and Medon, high above the rest,Antenor's sons, and Ceres' sacred priest.And proud Idæus, Priam's charioteer,Who shakes his empty reins, and aims his airy spear.The gladsome ghosts, in circling troops, attend,And with unwearied eyes behold their friend;Delight to hover near, and long to knowWhat business brought him to the realms below.But Argive chiefs, and Agamemnon's train,When his refulgent arms flashed through the shady plain,Fled from his well known face, with wonted fear,}As when his thundering sword and pointed spear}Drove headlong to their ships, and gleaned the routed rear.}They raised a feeble cry, with trembling notes;But the weak voice deceived their gasping throats.Here Priam's son, Deïphobus, he found,Whose face and limbs were one continued wound.Dishonest, with lopped arms, the youth appears,Spoiled of his nose, and shortened of his ears.He scarcely knew him, striving to disownHis blotted form, and blushing to be known;And therefore first began:—"O Teucer's race!}Who durst thy faultless figure thus deface?}What heart could wish, what hand inflict, this dire disgrace?}'Twas famed, that, in our last and fatal night,Your single prowess long sustained the fight,Till, tired, not forced, a glorious fate you chose,And fell upon a heap of slaughtered foes.But, in remembrance of so brave a deed,A tomb and funeral honours I decreed;Thrice called your manes on the Trojan plains:The place your armour and your name retains.Your body too I sought, and, had I found,Designed for burial in your native ground."The ghost replied:—"Your piety has paidAll needful rites, to rest my wandering shade:But cruel Fate, and my more cruel wife,To Grecian swords betrayed my sleeping life.These are the monuments of Helen's love—The shame I bear below, the marks I bore above.You know in what deluding joys we pastThe night, that was by heaven decreed our last.For, when the fatal horse, descending down,Pregnant with arms, o'erwhelmed the unhappy town,She feigned nocturnal orgies; left my bed,And, mixed with Trojan dames, the dances led;Then, waving high her torch, the signal made,Which roused the Grecians from their ambuscade.With watching overworn, with cares oppressed,}Unhappy I had laid me down to rest,}And heavy sleep my weary limbs possessed.}Meantime my worthy wife our arms mislaid,And, from beneath my head, my sword conveyed;The door unlatched, and, with repeated calls,Invites her former lord within my walls.Thus in her crime her confidence she placed,And with new treasons would redeem the past.What need I more? Into the room they ran,And meanly murdered a defenceless man.Ulysses, basely born, first led the way.—}Avenging powers! with justice if I pray,}That fortune be their own another day!—}But answer you; and in your turn relate,What brought you, living, to the Stygian state.Driven by the winds and errors of the sea,}Or did you heaven's superior doom obey?}Or tell what other chance conducts your way,}To view, with mortal eyes, our dark retreats,Tumults and torments of the infernal seats."While thus, in talk, the flying hours they pass,The sun had finished more than half his race:And they, perhaps, in words and tears had spentThe little time of stay which heaven had lent:But thus the Sibyl chides their long delay:—"Night rushes down, and headlong drives the day:'Tis here, in different paths, the way divides;The right to Pluto's golden palace guides;The left to that unhappy region tends,}Which to the depth of Tartarus descends—}The seat of night profound, and punished fiends."}Then thus Deïphobus:—"O sacred maid!Forbear to chide, and be your will obeyed.Lo! to the secret shadows I retire,To pay my penance till my years expire.[109]Proceed, auspicious prince, with glory crowned,And born to better fates than I have found."He said; and, while he said, his steps he turnedTo secret shadows, and in silence mourned.The hero, looking on the left, espiedA lofty tower, and strong on every sideWith treble walls, which Phlegethon surrounds,}Whose fiery flood the burning empire bounds;}And, pressed betwixt the rocks, the bellowing noise resounds.}Wide is the fronting gate, and, raised on highWith adamantine columns, threats the sky.Vain is the force of man, and heaven's as vain,To crush the pillars which the pile sustain.Sublime on these a tower of steel is reared;And dire Tysiphone there keeps the ward,Girt in her sanguine gown, by night and day,Observant of the souls that pass the downward way.From hence are heard the groans of ghosts, the painsOf sounding lashes, and of dragging chains.The Trojan stood astonished at their cries,And asked his guide, from whence those yells arise;And what the crimes, and what the tortures were,And loud laments, that rent the liquid air.She thus replied:—"The chaste and holy raceAre all forbidden this polluted place.But Hecat, when she gave to rule the woods,}Then led me trembling through these dire abodes,}And taught the tortures of the avenging gods.}These are the realms of unrelenting Fate;And awful Rhadamanthus rules the state.He hears and judges each committed crime;Inquires into the manner, place, and time.The conscious wretch must all his acts reveal,(Loth to confess, unable to conceal,)From the first moment of his vital breath,To his last hour of unrepenting death.Straight, o'er the guilty ghost, the Fury shakes}The sounding whip, and brandishes her snakes,}And the pale sinner, with her sisters, takes.}Then, of itself, unfolds the eternal door;With dreadful sounds the brazen hinges roar.You see before the gate, what stalking ghostCommands the guard, what centries keep the post.More formidable Hydra stands within,Whose jaws with iron teeth severely grin.The gaping gulf low to the centre lies,And twice as deep, as earth is distant from the skies.The rivals of the gods, the Titan race,Here, singed with lightning, roll within the unfathomed space.Here lie the Aloëan twins, (I saw them both,)Enormous bodies, of gigantic growth,Who dared in fight the Thunderer to defy,Affect his heaven, and force him from the sky.Salmoneus, suffering cruel pains, I found,For emulating Jove with rattling soundOf mimic thunder, and the glittering blazeOf pointed lightnings, and their forky rays.Through Elis, and the Grecian towns, he flew:The audacious wretch four fiery coursers drew:He waved a torch aloft, and, madly vain,Sought god-like worship from a servile train.Ambitious fool! with horny hoofs to passO'er hollow arches of resounding brass,To rival thunder in its rapid course,And imitate inimitable force!But he, the king of heaven, obscure on high,Bared his red arm, and, launching from the skyHis writhen bolt, not shaking empty smoke,Down to the deep abyss the flaming felon struck.There Tityus was to see, who took his birthFrom heaven, his nursing from the foodful earth.Here his gigantic limbs, with large embrace,Infold nine acres of infernal space.A ravenous vulture, in his opened side,Her crooked beak and cruel talons tried;Still for the growing liver digged his breast;The growing liver still supplied the feast;Still are his entrails fruitful to their pains:The immortal hunger lasts, the immortal food remains.Ixion and Pirithoüs I could name,And more Thessalian chiefs of mighty fame.High o'er their heads a mouldering rock is placed,That promises a fall, and shakes at every blast.They lie below, on golden beds displayed;And genial feasts with regal pomp are made.The queen of Furies by their sides is set,And snatches from their mouths the untasted meat,Which if they touch, her hissing snakes she rears,Tossing her torch, and thundering in their ears.Then they, who brothers' better claim disown,Expel their parents, and usurp the throne;Defraud their clients, and, to lucre sold,Sit brooding on unprofitable gold—Who dare not give, and even refuse to lend,To their poor kindred, or a wanting friend—Vast is the throng of these; nor less the trainOf lustful youths, for foul adultery slain—Hosts of deserters, who their honour sold,And basely broke their faith for bribes of gold.All these within the dungeon's depth remain,Despairing pardon, and expecting pain.Ask not what pains; nor farther seek to knowTheir process, or the forms of law below.Some roll a mighty stone; some, laid along,And bound with burning wires, on spokes of wheels are hung.Unhappy Theseus, doomed for ever there,Is fixed by Fate on his eternal chair:And wretched Phlegyas warns the world with cries,}(Could warning make the world more just or wise,)}'Learn righteousness, and dread the avenging deities.'}To tyrants others have their country sold,Imposing foreign lords, for foreign gold:Some have old laws repealed, new statutes made,Not as the people pleased, but as they paid.With incest some their daughters' bed profaned.
He said, and wept; then spread his sails before}The winds, and reached at length the Cuman shore:}Their anchors dropped, his crew the vessels moor.}They turn their heads to sea, their sterns to land,And greet with greedy joy the Italian strand.Some strike from clashing flints their fiery seed;Some gather sticks, the kindled flames to feed,Or search for hollow trees, and fell the woods,Or trace through valleys the discovered floods.Thus while their several charges they fulfil,The pious prince ascends the sacred hillWhere Phœbus is adored; and seeks the shade,Which hides from sight his venerable maid.Deep in a cave the Sibyl makes abode;Thence full of Fate returns, and of the god.Through Trivia's grove they walk; and now behold,And enter now, the temple roofed with gold.When Dædalus, to fly the Cretan shore,His heavy limbs on jointed pinions bore,(The first who sailed in air,) 'tis sung by Fame,}To the Cumæan coast at length he came,}And, here alighting, built this costly frame.}Inscribed to Phœbus, here he hung on highThe steerage of his wings, that cut the sky:Then, o'er the lofty gate, his art embossedAndrogeos' death, and (offerings to his ghost)Seven youths from Athens yearly sent, to meetThe fate appointed by revengeful Crete.And next to these the dreadful urn was placed,In which the destined names by lots were cast:The mournful parents stand around in tears,And rising Crete against their shore appears.There too, in living sculpture, might be seenThe mad affection of the Cretan queen;Then how she cheats her bellowing lover's eye;The rushing leap, the doubtful progeny—The lower part a beast, a man above—The monument of their polluted love.Nor far from thence he graved the wonderous maze,A thousand doors, a thousand winding ways:Here dwells the monster, hid from human view,Not to be found, but by the faithful clue;Till the kind artist, moved with pious grief,Lent to the loving maid this last relief,And all those erring paths described so well,That Theseus conquered, and the monster fell.Here hapless Icarus had found his part,Had not the father's grief restrained his art.He twice essayed to cast his son in gold;Twice from his hands he dropped the forming mould.All this with wondering eyes Æneas viewed:Each varying object his delight renewed.Eager to read the rest...Achates came,}And by his side the mad divining dame,}The priestess of the god, Deïphobe her name.}"Time suffers not," she said, "to feed your eyesWith empty pleasures; haste the sacrifice.Seven bullocks, yet unyoked, for Phœbus chuse,And for Diana seven unspotted ewes."This said, the servants urge the sacred rites,While to the temple she the prince invites.A spacious cave, within its farmost part,Was hewed and fashioned by laborious art,Through the hill's hollow sides: before the place,A hundred doors a hundred entries grace:As many voices issue, and the soundOf Sibyl's words as many times rebound.Now to the mouth they come. Aloud she cries,—"This is the time! inquire your destinies!He comes! behold the god!" Thus while she said,(And shivering at the sacred entry staid,)Her colour changed; her face was not the same,And hollow groans from her deep spirit came.Her hair stood up; convulsive rage possessedHer trembling limbs, and heaved her labouring breast.Greater than human kind she seemed to look,And, with an accent more than mortal, spoke.Her staring eyes with sparkling fury roll,When all the god came rushing on her soul.Swiftly she turned, and, foaming as she spoke,—"Why this delay?" she cried—"the powers invoke.Thy prayers alone can open this abode;Else vain are my demands, and dumb the god."She said no more. The trembling Trojans hear,O'er-spread with a damp sweat, and holy fear.The prince himself, with awful dread possessed,His vows to great Apollo thus addressed:—"Indulgent god! propitious power to Troy,Swift to relieve, unwilling to destroy!Directed by whose hand, the Dardan dartPierced the proud Grecian's only mortal part!Thus far, by Fate's decrees and thy commands,Through ambient seas and through devouring sands,Our exiled crew has sought the Ausonian ground;And now, at length, the flying coast is found.Thus far the fate of Troy, from place to place,With fury has pursued her wandering race.Here cease, ye powers, and let your vengeance end:Troy is no more, and can no more offend.And thou, O sacred maid, inspired to seeThe event of things in dark futurity!Give me, what heaven has promised to my fate,To conquer and command the Latian state;To fix my wandering gods, and find a placeFor the long exiles of the Trojan race.Then shall my grateful hands a temple rearTo the twin gods, with vows and solemn prayer;And annual rites, and festivals, and games,Shall be performed to their auspicious names.Nor shalt thou want thy honours in my land;For there thy faithful oracles shall stand,Preserved in shrines; and every sacred lay,Which, by thy mouth, Apollo shall convey—-All shall be treasured by a chosen trainOf holy priests, and ever shall remain.But, oh! commit not thy prophetic mindTo flitting leaves, the sport of every wind,Lest they disperse in air our empty fate;Write not, but, what the powers ordain, relate."Struggling in vain, impatient of her load,And labouring underneath the ponderous god,The more she strove to shake him from her breast,With more and far superior force he pressed;Commands his entrance, and, without controul,Usurps her organs, and inspires her soul.Now, with a furious blast, the hundred doors}Ope of themselves; a rushing whirlwind roars}Within the cave, and Sibyl's voice restores:—}"Escaped the dangers of the watery reign,Yet more and greater ills by land remain.The coast, so long desired, (nor doubt the event,)Thy troops shall reach, but, having reached, repent.Wars, horrid wars, I view—a field of blood,And Tyber rolling with a purple flood.Simoïs nor Xanthus shall be wanting there:A new Achilles shall in arms appear,And he, too, goddess-born. Fierce Juno's hate,Added to hostile force, shall urge thy fate.To what strange nations shalt not thou resort,Driven to solicit aid at every court!The cause the same which Ilium once oppressed—A foreign mistress, and a foreign guest.But thou, secure of soul, unbent with woes,The more thy fortune frowns, the more oppose.The dawnings of thy safety shall be shown,From, whence thou least shall hope, a Grecian town."Thus, from the dark recess, the Sibyl spoke,}And the resisting air the thunder broke;}The cave rebellowed, and the temple shook.}The ambiguous god, who ruled her labouring breast,}In these mysterious words his mind expressed;}Some truths revealed, in terms involved the rest.}At length her fury fell, her foaming ceased,And, ebbing in her soul, the god decreased.Then thus the chief:—"No terror to my view,No frightful face of danger, can be new.Inured to suffer, and resolved to dare,The Fates, without my power, shall be without my care.This let me crave—since near your grove the road}To hell lies open, and the dark abode,}Which Acheron surrounds, the innavigable flood—}Conduct me through the regions void of light,And lead me longing to my father's sight.For him, a thousand dangers I have sought,}And, rushing where the thickest Grecians fought,}Safe on my back the sacred burden brought.}He, for my sake, the raging ocean tried,}And wrath of heaven, (my still auspicious guide,)}And bore, beyond the strength decrepit age supplied.}Oft, since he breathed his last, in dead of night,His reverend image stood before my sight;Enjoined to seek, below, his holy shade—Conducted there by your unerring aid.But you, if pious minds by prayers are won,Oblige the father, and protect the son.Yours is the power; nor Proserpine in vainHas made you priestess of her nightly reign.If Orpheus, armed with his enchanting lyre,The ruthless king with pity could inspire,And from the shades below redeem his wife;If Pollux, offering his alternate life,Could free his brother, and can daily goBy turns aloft, by turns descend below;—Why name I Theseus, or his greater friend,Who trod the downward path, and upward could ascend?Not less than theirs, from Jove my lineage came;My mother greater, my descent the same."So prayed the Trojan prince, and, while he prayed,His hand upon the holy altar laid.Then thus replied the prophetess divine:—"O goddess-born, of great Anchises' line!The gates of hell are open night and day;Smooth the descent, and easy is the way:But, to return, and view the cheerful skies—In this the task and mighty labour lies.To few great Jupiter imparts this grace,And those of shining worth, and heavenly race.Betwixt those regions and our upper light,Deep forests and impenetrable nightPossess the middle space: the infernal boundsCocytus, with his sable waves, surrounds.But, if so dire a love your soul invades,As twice below to view the trembling shades;If you so hard a toil will undertake,As twice to pass the innavigable lake;Receive my counsel. In the neighbouring groveThere stands a tree; the queen of Stygian JoveClaims it her own; thick woods and gloomy nightConceal the happy plant from human sight.One bough it bears; but (wonderous to behold!)The ductile rind and leaves of radiant gold:This from the vulgar branches must be torn,And to fair Proserpine the present borne,Ere leave be given to tempt the nether skies.}The first thus rent, a second will arise,}And the same metal the same room supplies.}Look round the wood, with lifted eyes, to seeThe lurking gold upon the fatal tree:Then rend it off, as holy rites command;The willing metal will obey thy hand,Following with ease, if, favoured by thy fate,Thou art foredoomed to view the Stygian state:If not, no labour can the tree constrain;And strength of stubborn arms, and steel, are vain.Besides, you know not, while you here attend,The unworthy fate of your unhappy friend:Breathless he lies; and his unburied ghost,Deprived of funeral rites, pollutes your host.Pay first his pious dues; and, for the dead,Two sable sheep around his hearse be led;Then, living turfs upon his body lay:}This done, securely take the destined way,}To find the regions destitute of day."}She said, and held her peace.—Æneas went}Sad from the cave, and full of discontent,}Unknowing whom the sacred Sibyl meant.}Achates, the companion of his breast,Goes grieving by his side, with equal cares oppressed.Walking, they talked, and fruitlessly divined,What friend the priestess by those words designed.But soon they found an object to deplore:Misenus lay extended on the shore—Son of the god of winds:—none so renowned,The warrior trumpet in the field to sound,With breathing brass to kindle fierce alarms,And rouse to dare their fate in honourable arms.He served great Hector, and was ever near,Not with his trumpet only, but his spear.But, by Pelides' arms when Hector fell,He chose Æneas; and he chose as well.Swoln with applause, and aiming still at more,He now provokes the sea-gods from the shore.With envy, Triton heard the martial sound,And the bold champion, for his challenge, drowned;Then cast his mangled carcase on the strand:—The gazing crowd around the body stand.All weep; but most Æneas mourns his fate,And hastens to perform the funeral state.In altar-wise, a stately pile they rear;The basis broad below, and top advanced in air.An ancient wood, fit for the work designed,(The shady covert of the savage kind,)The Trojans found: the sounding axe is plied;Firs, pines, and pitch trees, and the towering prideOf forest ashes, feel the fatal stroke,And piercing wedges cleave the stubborn oak.Huge trunks of trees, felled from the steepy crownOf the bare mountains, roll with ruin down.Armed like the rest the Trojan prince appears,And, by his pious labour, urges theirs.Thus while he wrought, revolving in his mindThe ways to compass what his wish designed,He cast his eyes upon the gloomy grove,And then with vows implored the queen of love:—"O! may thy power, propitious still to me,Conduct my steps to find the fatal tree,In this deep forest; since the Sibyl's breathForetold, alas! too true, Misenus' death."Scarce had he said, when, full before his sight,}Two doves, descending from their airy flight,}Secure upon the grassy plain alight.}He knew his mother's birds; and thus he prayed:—"Be you my guides, with your auspicious aid,And lead my footsteps, till the branch be found,Whose glittering shadow gilds the sacred ground.And thou, great parent! with celestial care,In this distress, be present to my prayer."Thus having said, he stopped, with watchful sight,Observing still the motions of their flight,What course they took, what happy signs they shew.}They fed, and, fluttering, by degrees withdrew}Still farther from the place, but still in view:}Hopping and flying thus, they led him onTo the slow lake, whose baleful stench to shun,They winged their flight aloft, then, stooping low,Perched on the double tree, that bears the golden bough.Through the green leaves the glittering shadows glow;As, on the sacred oak, the wintery misletoe,Where the proud mother views her precious brood;And happier branches, which she never sowed.Such was the glittering; such the ruddy rind,And dancing leaves, that wantoned in the wind.He seized the shining bough with griping hold,And rent away, with ease, the lingering gold,Then to the Sibyl's palace bore the prize.}Meantime, the Trojan troops, with weeping eyes,}To dead Misenus pay his obsequies.}First, from the ground, a lofty pile they rear,Of pitch-trees, oaks, and pines, and unctuous fir:The fabric's front with cypress twigs they strew,And stick the sides with boughs of baleful yew.The topmost part his glittering arms adorn;Warm waters, then, in brazen cauldrons borne,Are poured to wash his body, joint by joint,And fragrant oils the stiffened limbs anoint.With groans and cries Misenus they deplore;Then on a bier, with purple covered o'er,The breathless body, thus bewailed, they lay,}And fire the pile, their faces turned away:}(Such reverent rites their fathers used to pay.)}Pure oil and incense on the fire they throw,And fat of victims, which his friends bestow.These gifts the greedy flames to dust devour;Then, on the living coals, red wine they pour;And, last, the reliques by themselves dispose,Which in a brazen urn the priests inclose.Old Corynæus compassed thrice the crew,And dipped an olive-branch in holy dew;Which thrice he sprinkled round, and thrice aloudInvoked the dead, and then dismissed the crowd.But good Æneas ordered on the shore}A stately tomb, whose top a trumpet bore,}A soldier's faulchion, and a seaman's oar.}Thus was his friend interred; and deathless fameStill to the lofty cape consigns his name.These rites performed, the prince, without delay,Hastes, to the nether world, his destined way.Deep was the cave; and, downward as it wentFrom the wide mouth, a rocky rough descent;And here the access a gloomy grove defends,And here the innavigable lake extends,O'er whose unhappy waters, void of light,No bird presumes to steer his airy flight;Such deadly stenches from the depth arise,And steaming sulphur, that infects the skies.From hence the Grecian bards their legends make,And give the name Avernus to the lake.Four sable bullocks, in the yoke untaught,For sacrifice the pious hero brought.The priestess pours the wine betwixt their horns;Then cuts the curling hair; that first oblation burns,Invoking Hecat hither to repair—A powerful name in hell and upper air.The sacred priests, with ready knives, bereaveThe beasts of life, and in full bowls receiveThe streaming blood: a lamb to Hell and Night(The sable wool without a streak of white)Æneas offers; and, by Fate's decree,A barren heifer, Proserpine, to thee.With holocausts he Pluto's altar fills:Seven brawny bulls with his own hand he kills:Then, on the broiling entrails, oil he pours;Which, ointed thus, the raging flame devours.Late the nocturnal sacrifice begun,Nor ended, till the next returning sun.Then earth began to bellow, trees to dance,And howling dogs in glimmering light advance,Ere Hecat came.—"Far hence be souls prophane!"The Sibyl cryed—"and from the grove abstain!Now, Trojan, take the way thy fates afford;Assume thy courage, and unsheath thy sword."She said, and passed along the gloomy space;The prince pursued her steps with equal pace.Ye realms, yet unrevealed to human sightYe gods, who rule the regions of the night!Ye gliding ghosts! permit me to relateThe mystic wonders of your silent state.Obscure they went through dreary shades, that ledAlong the waste dominions of the dead.Thus wander travellers in woods by night,By the moon's doubtful and malignant light,When Jove in dusky clouds involves the skies,And the faint crescent shoots by fits before their eyes.Just in the gate, and in the jaws of hell,Revengeful Cares and sullen Sorrows dwell,And pale Diseases, and repining Age,Want, Fear, and Famine's unresisted rage;Here Toils, and Death, and Deaths half-brother, Sleep,(Forms terrible to view) their centry keep;With anxious Pleasures of a guilty mind,Deep Frauds before, and open Force behind;The Furies' iron beds; and Strife, that shakesHer hissing tresses, and unfolds her snakes.Full in the midst of this infernal road,An elm displays her dusky arms abroad:The god of sleep there hides his heavy head,And empty dreams on every leaf are spread.Of various forms unnumbered spectres more,Centaurs, and double shapes, besiege the door.Before the passage, horrid Hydra stands,And Briareus with all his hundred hands;Gorgons, Geryon with his triple frame;And vain Chimæra vomits empty flame.The chief unsheathed his shining steel, prepared,Though seized with sudden fear, to force the guard,Offering his brandished weapon at their face;Had not the Sibyl stopped his eager pace,And told him what those empty phantoms were—Forms without bodies, and impassive air.Hence to deep Acheron they take their way,Whose troubled eddies, thick with ooze and clay,Are whirled aloft, and in Cocytus lost:There Charon stands, who rules the dreary coast—A sordid god: down from his hoary chinA length of beard descends, uncombed, unclean:His eyes, like hollow furnaces on fire;A girdle, foul with grease, binds his obscene attire.He spreads his canvas; with his pole he steers;The freights of flitting ghosts in his thin bottom bears.He looked in years; yet, in his years, were seenA youthful vigour, and autumnal green.An airy crowd came rushing where he stood,Which filled the margin of the fatal flood—Husbands and wives, boys and unmarried maids,And mighty heroes' more majestic shades,And youths, entombed before their father's eyes,With hollow groans, and shrieks, and feeble cries.Thick as the leaves in autumn strow the woods,Or fowls, by winter forced, forsake the floods,And wing their hasty flight to happier lands—}Such, and so thick, the shivering army stands,}And press for passage with extended hands.}Now these, now those, the surly boatman bore:The rest he drove to distance from the shore.The hero, who beheld, with wondering eyes,The tumult mixed with shrieks, laments, and cries,Asked of his guide, what the rude concourse meant?Why to the shore the thronging people bent?What forms of law among the ghosts were used?Why some were ferried o'er, and some refused?"Son of Anchises! offspring of the gods!(The Sibyl said) you see the Stygian floods,The sacred streams, which heaven's imperial stateAttests in oaths, and fears to violate.The ghosts rejected are the unhappy crewDeprived of sepulchres and funeral due:The boatman, Charon; those, the buried host,He ferries over to the farther coast;Nor dares his transport vessel cross the wavesWith such whose bones are not composed in graves.A hundred years they wander on the shore;At length, their penance done, are wafted o'er."The Trojan chief his forward pace repressed,Revolving anxious thoughts within his breast.He saw his friends, who, whelmed beneath the waves;Their funeral honours claimed, and asked their quiet graves.The lost Leucaspis in the crowd he knew,And the brave leader of the Lycian crew,Whom, on the Tyrrhene seas, the tempests met;The sailors mastered, and the ship o'erset.Amidst the spirits, Palinurus pressed,Yet fresh from life, a new-admitted guest,Who, while he steering viewed the stars, and boreHis course from Afric to the Latian shore,Fell headlong down. The Trojan fixed his view,And scarcely through the gloom the sullen shadow knew.Then thus the prince:—"What envious power, O friend!Brought your loved life to this disastrous end?For Phœbus, ever true in all he said,Has, in your fate alone, my faith betrayed.The god foretold you should not die, beforeYou reached, secure from seas, the Italian shore.Is this the unerring power?"—The ghost replied:"Nor Phœbus flattered, nor his answers lied;Nor envious gods have sent me to the deep:}But, while the stars and course of heaven I keep,}My wearied eyes were seized with fatal sleep.}I fell; and, with my weight, the helm constrainedWas drawn along, which yet my gripe retained.Now by the winds and raging waves I swear,Your safety, more than mine, was then my care;Lest, of the guide bereft, the rudder lost,Your ship should run against the rocky coast.Three blustering nights, borne by the southern blast,I floated, and discovered land at last:High on a mounting wave, my head I bore,Forcing my strength, and gathering to the shore.Panting, but past the danger, now I seizedThe craggy cliffs, and my tired members eased.While, cumbered with my dropping clothes, I lay,The cruel nation, covetous of prey,Stained with my blood the unhospitable coast;And now, by winds and waves, my lifeless limbs are tossed:Which, O! avert, by yon etherial light,Which I have lost for this eternal night:Or, if by dearer ties you may be won,By your dead sire, and by your living son,Redeem from this reproach my wandering ghost.Or with your navy seek the Velin coast,And in a peaceful grave my corpse compose;Or, if a nearer way your mother shows,(Without whose aid, you durst not undertakeThis frightful passage o'er the Stygian lake,)Lend to this wretch your hand, and waft him o'erTo the sweet banks of yon forbidden shore."Scarce had he said; the prophetess began:—"What hopes delude thee, miserable man?Think'st thou, thus unintombed, to cross the floods,}To view the Furies and infernal gods,}And visit, without leave, the dark abodes?}Attend the term of long revolving years;Fate, and the dooming gods, are deaf to tears.[106]This comfort of thy dire misfortune take—The wrath of heaven, inflicted for thy sake,With vengeance shall pursue the inhuman coast,Till they propitiate thy offended ghost,And raise a tomb, with vows and solemn prayer;And Palinurus' name the place shall bear."This calmed his cares; soothed with his future fame,And pleased to hear his propagated name.Now nearer to the Stygian lake they draw:Whom, from the shore, the surly boatman saw;Observed their passage through the shady wood,And marked their near approaches to the flood:Then thus he called aloud, inflamed with wrath:—"Mortal, whate'er, who this forbidden pathIn arms presum'st to tread! I charge thee, stand,And tell thy name, and business in the land.Know, this the realm of night—the Stygian shore:My boat conveys no living bodies o'er;Nor was I pleased great Theseus once to bear,(Who forced a passage with his pointed spear,)Nor strong Alcides—men of mighty fame,And from the immortal gods their lineage came.In fetters one the barking porter tied,}And took him trembling from his sovereign's side:}Two sought by force to seize his beauteous bride."}To whom the Sibyl thus:—"Compose thy mind;Nor frauds are here contrived, nor force designed.Still may the dog the wandering troops constrain}Of airy ghosts, and vex the guilty train,}And with her grisly lord his lovely queen remain.}The Trojan chief, whose lineage is from Jove,}Much famed for arms, and more for filial love,}Is sent to seek his sire in your Elysian grove.}If neither piety, nor heaven's command,Can gain his passage to the Stygian strand,This fatal present shall prevail, at least"—Then shewed the shining bough, concealed within her vest.No more was needful: for the gloomy godStood mute with awe, to see the golden rod;Admired the destined offering to his queen—A venerable gift, so rarely seen.His fury thus appeased, he puts to land;The ghosts forsake their seats at his command:He clears the deck, receives the mighty freight;The leaky vessel groans beneath the weight.Slowly she[107]sails, and scarcely stems the tides;The pressing water pours within her sides.His passengers at length are wafted o'er,Exposed, in muddy weeds, upon the miry shore.No sooner landed, in his den they foundThe triple porter of the Stygian sound,Grim Cerberus, who soon began to rearHis crested snakes, and armed his bristling hair.The prudent Sibyl had before preparedA sop, in honey steeped, to charm the guard;Which, mixed with powerful drugs, she cast beforeHis greedy grinning jaws, just oped to roar.With three enormous mouths he gapes; and straight,With hunger pressed, devours the pleasing bait.Long draughts of sleep his monstrous limbs enslave;He reels, and, falling, fills the spacious cave.The keeper charmed, the chief without delayPassed on, and took the irremeable way.Before the gates, the cries of babes new born,Whom Fate had from their tender mothers torn,Assault his ears: then those, whom form of lawsCondemned to die, when traitors judged their cause.Nor want they lots, nor judges to reviewThe wrongful sentence, and award a new.Minos, the strict inquisitor, appears;And lives and crimes, with his assessors, hears.Round, in his urn, the blended balls he rolls,Absolves the just, and dooms the guilty souls.The next, in place and punishment, are theyWho prodigally throw their souls away—[108]Fools, who, repining at their wretched state,And loathing anxious life, suborned their fate.With late repentance, now they would retrieveThe bodies they forsook, and wish to live;Their pains and poverty desire to bear,To view the light of heaven, and breathe the vital air:But Fate forbids; the Stygian floods oppose,And, with nine circling streams, the captive souls inclose.Not far from thence, the Mournful Fields appear,So called from lovers that inhabit there.The souls, whom that unhappy flame invades,In secret solitude and myrtle shadesMake endless moans, and, pining with desire,Lament too late their unextinguished fire.Here Procris, Eriphyle here he foundBaring her breast, yet bleeding with the woundMade by her son. He saw Pasiphaë there,With Phædra's ghost, a foul incestuous pair.There Laodamia, with Evadne, moves—Unhappy both, but loyal in their loves:Cæneus, a woman once, and once a man,But ending in the sex she first began.Not far from these Phœnician Dido stood,Fresh from her wound, her bosom bathed in blood;Whom when the Trojan hero hardly knew,Obscure in shades, and with a doubtful view,(Doubtful as he who sees, through dusky night,Or thinks he sees, the moon's uncertain light,)With tears he first approached the sullen shade;And, as his love inspired him, thus he said;—"Unhappy queen! then is the common breathOf rumour true, in your reported death,And I, alas! the cause?—By heaven, I vow,And all the powers that rule the realms below,Unwilling I forsook your friendly state,Commanded by the gods, and forced by Fate—Those gods, that Fate, whose unresisted might}Have sent me to these regions void of light}Through the vast empire of eternal night.}Nor dared I to presume, that, pressed with grief,My flight should urge you to this dire relief.Stay, stay your steps, and listen to my vows!'Tis the last interview that Fate allows!"In vain he thus attempts her mind to moveWith tears and prayers, and late-repenting love.Disdainfully she looked; then turning round,But fixed her eyes unmoved upon the ground,And, what he says and swears, regards no more,Than the deaf rocks, when the loud billows roar;But whirled away, to shun his hateful sight,Hid in the forest, and the shades of night;Then sought Sichæus through the shady grove,Who answered all her cares, and equalled all her love.Some pious tears the pitying hero paid,And followed with his eyes the flitting shade,Then took the forward way, by Fate ordained,}And, with his guide, the farther fields attained,}Where, severed from the rest, the warrior souls remained.}Tydeus he met, with Meleager's race,}The pride of armies, and the soldiers' grace;}And pale Adrastus with his ghastly face.}Of Trojan chiefs he viewed a numerous train,All much lamented, all in battle slain—Glaucus and Medon, high above the rest,Antenor's sons, and Ceres' sacred priest.And proud Idæus, Priam's charioteer,Who shakes his empty reins, and aims his airy spear.The gladsome ghosts, in circling troops, attend,And with unwearied eyes behold their friend;Delight to hover near, and long to knowWhat business brought him to the realms below.But Argive chiefs, and Agamemnon's train,When his refulgent arms flashed through the shady plain,Fled from his well known face, with wonted fear,}As when his thundering sword and pointed spear}Drove headlong to their ships, and gleaned the routed rear.}They raised a feeble cry, with trembling notes;But the weak voice deceived their gasping throats.Here Priam's son, Deïphobus, he found,Whose face and limbs were one continued wound.Dishonest, with lopped arms, the youth appears,Spoiled of his nose, and shortened of his ears.He scarcely knew him, striving to disownHis blotted form, and blushing to be known;And therefore first began:—"O Teucer's race!}Who durst thy faultless figure thus deface?}What heart could wish, what hand inflict, this dire disgrace?}'Twas famed, that, in our last and fatal night,Your single prowess long sustained the fight,Till, tired, not forced, a glorious fate you chose,And fell upon a heap of slaughtered foes.But, in remembrance of so brave a deed,A tomb and funeral honours I decreed;Thrice called your manes on the Trojan plains:The place your armour and your name retains.Your body too I sought, and, had I found,Designed for burial in your native ground."The ghost replied:—"Your piety has paidAll needful rites, to rest my wandering shade:But cruel Fate, and my more cruel wife,To Grecian swords betrayed my sleeping life.These are the monuments of Helen's love—The shame I bear below, the marks I bore above.You know in what deluding joys we pastThe night, that was by heaven decreed our last.For, when the fatal horse, descending down,Pregnant with arms, o'erwhelmed the unhappy town,She feigned nocturnal orgies; left my bed,And, mixed with Trojan dames, the dances led;Then, waving high her torch, the signal made,Which roused the Grecians from their ambuscade.With watching overworn, with cares oppressed,}Unhappy I had laid me down to rest,}And heavy sleep my weary limbs possessed.}Meantime my worthy wife our arms mislaid,And, from beneath my head, my sword conveyed;The door unlatched, and, with repeated calls,Invites her former lord within my walls.Thus in her crime her confidence she placed,And with new treasons would redeem the past.What need I more? Into the room they ran,And meanly murdered a defenceless man.Ulysses, basely born, first led the way.—}Avenging powers! with justice if I pray,}That fortune be their own another day!—}But answer you; and in your turn relate,What brought you, living, to the Stygian state.Driven by the winds and errors of the sea,}Or did you heaven's superior doom obey?}Or tell what other chance conducts your way,}To view, with mortal eyes, our dark retreats,Tumults and torments of the infernal seats."While thus, in talk, the flying hours they pass,The sun had finished more than half his race:And they, perhaps, in words and tears had spentThe little time of stay which heaven had lent:But thus the Sibyl chides their long delay:—"Night rushes down, and headlong drives the day:'Tis here, in different paths, the way divides;The right to Pluto's golden palace guides;The left to that unhappy region tends,}Which to the depth of Tartarus descends—}The seat of night profound, and punished fiends."}Then thus Deïphobus:—"O sacred maid!Forbear to chide, and be your will obeyed.Lo! to the secret shadows I retire,To pay my penance till my years expire.[109]Proceed, auspicious prince, with glory crowned,And born to better fates than I have found."He said; and, while he said, his steps he turnedTo secret shadows, and in silence mourned.The hero, looking on the left, espiedA lofty tower, and strong on every sideWith treble walls, which Phlegethon surrounds,}Whose fiery flood the burning empire bounds;}And, pressed betwixt the rocks, the bellowing noise resounds.}Wide is the fronting gate, and, raised on highWith adamantine columns, threats the sky.Vain is the force of man, and heaven's as vain,To crush the pillars which the pile sustain.Sublime on these a tower of steel is reared;And dire Tysiphone there keeps the ward,Girt in her sanguine gown, by night and day,Observant of the souls that pass the downward way.From hence are heard the groans of ghosts, the painsOf sounding lashes, and of dragging chains.The Trojan stood astonished at their cries,And asked his guide, from whence those yells arise;And what the crimes, and what the tortures were,And loud laments, that rent the liquid air.She thus replied:—"The chaste and holy raceAre all forbidden this polluted place.But Hecat, when she gave to rule the woods,}Then led me trembling through these dire abodes,}And taught the tortures of the avenging gods.}These are the realms of unrelenting Fate;And awful Rhadamanthus rules the state.He hears and judges each committed crime;Inquires into the manner, place, and time.The conscious wretch must all his acts reveal,(Loth to confess, unable to conceal,)From the first moment of his vital breath,To his last hour of unrepenting death.Straight, o'er the guilty ghost, the Fury shakes}The sounding whip, and brandishes her snakes,}And the pale sinner, with her sisters, takes.}Then, of itself, unfolds the eternal door;With dreadful sounds the brazen hinges roar.You see before the gate, what stalking ghostCommands the guard, what centries keep the post.More formidable Hydra stands within,Whose jaws with iron teeth severely grin.The gaping gulf low to the centre lies,And twice as deep, as earth is distant from the skies.The rivals of the gods, the Titan race,Here, singed with lightning, roll within the unfathomed space.Here lie the Aloëan twins, (I saw them both,)Enormous bodies, of gigantic growth,Who dared in fight the Thunderer to defy,Affect his heaven, and force him from the sky.Salmoneus, suffering cruel pains, I found,For emulating Jove with rattling soundOf mimic thunder, and the glittering blazeOf pointed lightnings, and their forky rays.Through Elis, and the Grecian towns, he flew:The audacious wretch four fiery coursers drew:He waved a torch aloft, and, madly vain,Sought god-like worship from a servile train.Ambitious fool! with horny hoofs to passO'er hollow arches of resounding brass,To rival thunder in its rapid course,And imitate inimitable force!But he, the king of heaven, obscure on high,Bared his red arm, and, launching from the skyHis writhen bolt, not shaking empty smoke,Down to the deep abyss the flaming felon struck.There Tityus was to see, who took his birthFrom heaven, his nursing from the foodful earth.Here his gigantic limbs, with large embrace,Infold nine acres of infernal space.A ravenous vulture, in his opened side,Her crooked beak and cruel talons tried;Still for the growing liver digged his breast;The growing liver still supplied the feast;Still are his entrails fruitful to their pains:The immortal hunger lasts, the immortal food remains.Ixion and Pirithoüs I could name,And more Thessalian chiefs of mighty fame.High o'er their heads a mouldering rock is placed,That promises a fall, and shakes at every blast.They lie below, on golden beds displayed;And genial feasts with regal pomp are made.The queen of Furies by their sides is set,And snatches from their mouths the untasted meat,Which if they touch, her hissing snakes she rears,Tossing her torch, and thundering in their ears.Then they, who brothers' better claim disown,Expel their parents, and usurp the throne;Defraud their clients, and, to lucre sold,Sit brooding on unprofitable gold—Who dare not give, and even refuse to lend,To their poor kindred, or a wanting friend—Vast is the throng of these; nor less the trainOf lustful youths, for foul adultery slain—Hosts of deserters, who their honour sold,And basely broke their faith for bribes of gold.All these within the dungeon's depth remain,Despairing pardon, and expecting pain.Ask not what pains; nor farther seek to knowTheir process, or the forms of law below.Some roll a mighty stone; some, laid along,And bound with burning wires, on spokes of wheels are hung.Unhappy Theseus, doomed for ever there,Is fixed by Fate on his eternal chair:And wretched Phlegyas warns the world with cries,}(Could warning make the world more just or wise,)}'Learn righteousness, and dread the avenging deities.'}To tyrants others have their country sold,Imposing foreign lords, for foreign gold:Some have old laws repealed, new statutes made,Not as the people pleased, but as they paid.With incest some their daughters' bed profaned.